


Maybe This Time

by mythras_fire



Series: Like Something Cosmic [4]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Character Study, Collective Consciousness, Episode Tag, M/M, Malex Feels, POV Michael Guerin, season two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23292355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythras_fire/pseuds/mythras_fire
Summary: "Your human is entrenched in the worst kind of battle there is: kin vs. kin. He’s a strong one but he’s going to need your help."
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: Like Something Cosmic [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1675075
Comments: 12
Kudos: 54





	1. S2E1: Out of Tune

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Off we go on another adventure... 👽😘🤠
> 
> Disclaimer: All characters, quotes, book and pop-culture references belong to their respective creators.

Isobel was not the only one who had discovered new powers in the last two weeks.

Michael had been exploring the dreamscape world ever since Caulfield. He’d made a connection with his mother before he bl— before she di— before he lost the connection.

He just couldn’t fucking handle that though so after all the shit had gone down with that bastard Noah and “Max Almighty” and A— everyone, Michael had vacuumed the bejeezus out of the bunker through the air ducts to rid himself of that nasty yellow pollen and holed up down there. Then he went walkabout.

That’s where she’d been waiting for him.

To say he was overwhelmed when he felt her presence brush up against his consciousness was kind of like saying that A— some people thought Danger! At the Picture Show was an okay band.

Michael still had a mother. He was pretty sure he’d never cried this much in his life, but he didn’t mind because they were tears of joy. Of relief. Of love. Michael still had a mother.

Her name was Mara. And his was—

“Hello, Giliath.”

“Hi, Mom,” Michael couldn’t help smiling as he entered the dreamscape that night after Mr. Scumbag’s funeral. Even after the shit day he’d had she could always make him feel better. He’d been kind of consistently buzzed for the past two weeks straight, mostly acetone with a whiskey chaser at night, but that helped him get to sleep so he could come visit his mom.

“Oh, that bad, huh?”

On the other hand, not being able to really hide his thoughts or emotions from her in here was not exactly optimal. They seemed to get amplified or something. It was a little disconcerting to say the least. He sat down at her knee. The landscape was different each time he came here. Tonight, they were stretched out on a grassy hillside under a weeping willow tree. The sky was awash in color and both moons were rising in the west as the sun dipped down below the eastern horizon.

“What? No, it was a funeral, I was appropriately sad. Sad for Izzy losing the one thing she’d been so proud of all these years. Blending in with the humans,” Michael replied.

“I wasn’t talking about the funeral.”

Michael wanted to groan but figured that was in poor taste when talking to his mother. He was still so new to even having a mother and when he’d said he wanted to be good for somebody, he meant it. He could be good for different people in different ways, right? And he wanted to be the best alien son he could be. Didn’t mean he couldn’t also play dumb. “I uh, don’t know what you’re talking about?”

She just raised an eyebrow imperiously at him which absolutely did _not_ help because it only reminded him of—

“Yes, you do.”

“Mom”, he whined, elongating the vowel sound. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t the best alien son. Yet. But he was working on it. 

“He sure is a cute one, your human. Those cheekbones alone…”

Michael’s face felt like it was on fire suddenly. “Oh my g— you did not just— what, he’s not my— Mom!” Dammit, why did he feel like he was going through puberty all over again right now? 

“Well, you certainly seem to think so, I’m just going off of your thoughts, you know, no need to get so flustered, Giliath,” she said with a barely contained straight face, her eyes aglow with mischief. 

“I told him no, Mom,” Michael wanted to pull his shirt up over his head and hide from her but he didn’t want to act like an actual child. He had some dignity left, surely.

“Good for you, love.”

“Wait, what? You’re not mad at me?”

“For standing your ground? No. I’ve seen the way you two look at each other,” she ran her fingers through his curls and his eyes closed of their own accord. “You two were put in impossibly difficult situations when you were far too young and had to deal with everything by yourselves, something you never should have had to do. He’s still working on himself, love, and you are, too.”

Michael hugged her calves and reveled in her warm touch. “But why do humans have to be so cruel?” He asked in a small voice.

“They’re just scared, Giliath. And people do awful things when they’re scared. But _some_ humans know exactly what they’re doing, and those are the ones to watch out for.”

“He joined up again. He was so close to getting out. And now because of me and what I did he’s going to put himself at risk again and I don’t think I could handle it if-if he…” he couldn’t finish the thought.

“Shh,” she pulled his chin up with a slender finger under his jaw. Her eyes were shining in the twilight dusk, all purples and blues and greens, a warm breeze rustling her blonde hair. “First of all, you need to stop blaming yourself. It was never their intention to let us out of there alive. _You_ found me. That’s the most important thing. You freed us. The others have found their way back to the Collective Consciousness. They’re with their loved ones. I’m here with you.” She placed a tender kiss on his forehead. “Secondly, your human is entrenched in the worst kind of battle there is: kin vs. kin. He’s a strong one but he’s going to need your help.”

Michael didn’t realize he was glowering until she pressed her thumb into the furrows of his brow and smoothed them out. “Why should I help him after everything his family did to us? To you?” He sounded like a petulant child at this point but he didn’t fucking care. “He tried to give me a folder full of all the horrible things they— I just couldn’t.”

“Oh, heart of mine,” she soothed as night fell, “you’ll see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When in doubt, consult your Elvish dictionary. Specifically Sindarin in this case, for Michael's alien name. Giliath means star-host, which I found most apropos.


	2. S2E4: Some Things Are Universal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, please enjoy some more Michael & Mara family feels <3.
> 
> I'm going off of memory here so the quotes used are paraphrases from the show.

“Stop chasing your cousin around with the furniture and come over here, Giliath. It’s time to mark your progress.”

Michael obediently stopped running after Isobel and his telekinesis dropped the divan cushions right in the middle of the passageway. Isobel turned around and made a face at him, in response to which Michael stuck out his tongue as she ran off before he turned around to make his way over to the wall where his mom was waiting patiently.

“Cushions, dear.”

“Oh, right, sorry,” Michael giggled. He closed his eyes and scrunched up his face as he concentrated really hard on returning the irregularly-shaped pieces of furniture to the divan on the other side of his mom’s quarters. She’d given him the challenge of moving things without looking at them this week and he wanted to show her that he was a fast learner. His favorite thing in the whole universe was making his mom smile. Well, that and chasing his cousins around. He had won their last three games of tag but he wasn’t very good at hide and seek yet because he had trouble sitting still long enough to stay hidden.

“Very good, Giliath, you are my best pupil!” she said as she swept him up in a hug that smelled like the rain that fell at home. He missed their home sometimes but all he had to do was climb into his mom’s lap and breathe in deeply and he’d feel like home had come with them on this big trip.

He giggled again. “I’m your only pupil, Mom!”

“Oh my, how right you are. That would also make you my smartest pupil, then. How lucky am I?”

Michael grinned. “Very lucky!”

She planted a big loud kiss to his forehead just under his curls before turning his shoulders to line up against the wall next to the floor-to-ceiling window of the ship.

Michael’s attention wandered out through the window into the starry forever-night as they zoomed through outer space. He had a new favorite space object every day and he wrote each one down in the scientific journal his mom had helped him make before they left. Today’s was the wormhole they’d travelled through to get to the Milky Way Galaxy from the Antarian Nebula. The swirl of colors outside and the way the air clung to his skin as the ship slid along the capillary action of the walls of the wormhole were a feast for Michael’s senses and he’d asked his mom if they were going to go through more wormholes tomorrow. She’d told him ‘maybe’, which didn’t generally mean ‘yes’ in Michael’s young experience but it also didn’t mean ‘no’ either, so he was okay with that prospect.

“Face forward, please.”

Michael dutifully dragged his eyes and brain away from the window and stood as straight as possible against the wall, looking out across the warm, comfy room. He felt the book she always used flattening his curls and heard the skritch of her pencil as she marked his new height. He just managed to keep from squirming as he waited for her to pull away and tell him he could look.

“Would you look at that. You also happen to be my tallest pupil,” she said with a chuckle.

Michael sprang away from the wall to look at his newest mark. “Wow, look at how little I was when we started!” He tried to do the calculations in his head and had to stick his tongue out for some reason, he wasn’t sure why, but it seemed to help. When he thought he had it, he looked up at his mom. “42?”

She beamed down at him and he felt golden on the inside. “Yes! Very good, Giliath, I have a feeling you’ll be teaching me things by this time next week.”

Michael giggled some more, “and then you can be my best pupil!”

“I will try my hardest, Alien Guy.”

Michael’s brow scrunched up in confusion.

_Alien Guy_ ? 

“Hey, Alien Guy! Wake up, man. You’re drooling all over the microfiche reader and it’s my turn anyway. Three o’clock.”

Michael groggily peeled his face up off the warm glass surface of the glorified newspaper microscope and discreetly wiped his mouth on his sleeve as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

“Hey, Nazi Guy. She’s all yours. I warmed her up for you,” he drawled as he collected his cowboy hat and the stack of microfiche chronicling the Roswell Gazette in the months after his mom’s incarceration. Looking for any shred of her being mentioned in relation to that foreman or the Long Ranch. Finding none. Must have nodded off at some point. He’d had the strangest dream, too, but it was already slipping through his fingers like sand through a sieve.

Until two days later when Alex looked over at him with those fathomless brown eyes and that soft smile Michael had been dreaming about for the last ten years to say a bit incredulously, if kindly, “It’s a height chart, Michael, didn’t anyone ever do that with you?”

His brain stuttered at the sound of his first name on Alex’s lips. Another thing he’d been waiting a decade to hear again and it was music to his ears. But there was something else…

He shook his head, the ephemeral sense memory of whatever was tickling his brain already fading so he just looked longingly back at the marks on the beam where his mom’s name was etched and replied softly, “Sounds like something you do with family.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because the answer is always 42.


End file.
